Monday, January 10, 2011

To be fair, the warnings for today had been universally dire: we're going to get lots of snow, you should expect problems, etc. It even is snowing in some parts of the area--but not in most. We don't need actual snow to panic, however; we just need the rumor of it.

The reason is that the moment someone discusses snow, we all have to face two realities:

1) No local government is really set up to handle it. They're much better at it than they were when I moved here, but snow really does constitute an exceptional experience for my part of North Carolina.

2) No one here knows how to drive on snow. Well, you do, of course, and maybe your friends, but not the rest of the people.

The combination of these factors means that you do not want to be stuck away from home should a real snowstorm hit, because you probably won't make it safely back there.

So, when the snow rumors start, our population follows a predictable pattern:

* We close the schools.

* Everyone who can work from home does.

* We swarm the grocery stores and buy all the milk, eggs, and bread that we can.

I've always found this last bit mystifying. Dennis Rogers, once a local newspaper columnist, hazarded a guess that we were all planning to make French toast should the white stuff fall. Perhaps it's toad-in-the-hole. I'm not sure.

Regardless, I'll be heading home from the office soon. Maybe we'll have breakfast for dinner.

6 comments:

Clarification, please. I can only cook a few things and one of my favorites is the eggy-in-the-basket which consists of a holey piece of toast with an egg filling the gap as they are fried together in a pan. In England, a toad-in-the-hole is a battered sausage. Not that any sausages are harmed in the making of said dish, they are merely coated in a delicious coating of deliciousness by someone who knows how to cook and (hypothetically) served to me with some veg and a bit of gravy.

Both sound utterly delicious right now... and I've completely lost my train of thought.

Oh yeah, do you mean an egg-in-toast? Hungry minds want to know. *grin*

Ah, we have a conflicting term usage. My mother called the dish you described--take piece of bread or toast, tear out the center, put it in a frying pan with already melted butter, crack an egg into the center--as "egg in the hole." Other friends have called it "toad in the hole." Now, "eggy in the basket." So many names, but one good dish.

As for the British usage, I apologize for stepping on it. Clearly, we need a peace treaty, perhaps with a breakfast meal, to address the use of the term.

No need for a peace treaty, I was merely curious. Athough a good meal with pleasant conversation never comes amiss. Breakfast foods are as gooda reason for a get together as any. Better actually, if you include bacon.

You left out toilet paper - speaking as a native North Carolinian, you run to the store for milk, eggs, bread, and toilet paper. For some reason, there was a morbid fear of running out of these items, even though it was rare to be iced in for more than a couple of days. I understand milk, eggs and bread. As perishable items, people didn’t keep more than a couple of day’s worth in the house. Why toilet paper? I have no idea.

I have no idea what you call the the egg-in-a-hole thing. We never cooked it, perhaps because the calorie count could not stand up to the combined forces of fried ham, fried eggs, biscuits and gravy.

I'm sure that science can prove, if the oxygen producing resources that are on the ground are lessened, the "sky" or atmosphere would fall upon us. Oygen is holding it up. And it sure is hot up there. With that in mind, the trees don't grow as big or numerous as they used to, the ocean has a garbage pit the size of texas in it, and the amount of toxic fumes from machinery, autos, and living is probably more than the trees are breathing. The sky is falling concept has nothing to do with fairy tales, and people ought to take a very serious look at what they're doing to this planet and do everything they can to quickly change it.